Top 100 Bbc's Quotes
#1. The BBC's aim, along with schools, libraries and literacy groups, to involve more people in reading groups is an exciting idea and one that I hope will keep readers all over the UK exploring and sharing the wonderful world of books.
Tessa Jowell
#2. I am sorry to be leaving the BBC. I have enjoyed a fascinating seven years at the corporation and am particularly proud to have played a small part in the development of the BBC's Global News services, BBC World Service and BBC World.
Pauline Neville-Jones
#3. I always got very excited about the Masters as a kid. I could hardly wait until the Wednesday when you'd get the BBC's preview. And I'd then be glued to the screen until Sunday night.
Rory McIlroy
#4. Compared with the BBC's studied neutrality, Fox comes across as a kind of Gong Show of propaganda.
Russ Baker
#5. I have not watched WAGs World, I have not watched the BBC's Upstairs, Downstairs, either. It would be Downton Abbey, I think.
Theresa May
#6. [on BBC's Sherlock] It's a rare challenge, both for the audience and an actor, to take part in something with this level of intelligence and wit. You have to really enjoy it. It's a form of mental and physical gymnastics.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#7. I think that the BBC's attitude toward the show while it was in production was very similar to that which Macbeth had toward murdering people - initial doubts, followed by cautious enthusiasm and then greater and greater alarm at the sheer scale of the undertaking and still no end in sight.
Douglas Adams
#8. The BBC's television, radio and online services remain an important part of British culture and the fact the BBC continues to thrive amongst audiences at home and abroad is testament to a professional and dedicated management team who are committed to providing a quality public service.
Pauline Neville-Jones
#9. There were all us baby boomers who had a grammar school education, started to learn, then went on the pill, the whole thing, and so there are today a lot more women writers, editors, producers, and so a lot more women's stories. God, the BBC's practically run by women.
Julie Walters
#10. The challenge is the culture. You have to have a vision for the BBC-it can't merely be that it's big and has a place in the market.
Jonathan Dimbleby
#11. Graham Norton makes me laugh. I love him. I'm not kidding. I watch him on BBC America every week. He's so fast.
Sarah Jessica Parker
#12. I used to do a Saturday drama group called Young Blood Theatre Company with school-friends in west London - nothing to do with my mum and dad. A casting director came to pick people out for a new BBC children's series called 'MI High.' She picked me, I auditioned, and I got the job.
Bel Powley
#13. BBC TV gets hold of an idea and beats it to death until we're all heartily sick of it. They buy people without thinking what they're going to do with them. It's the wrong way around. What they should be doing is employing really good ideas people to come up with good ideas.
Terry Wogan
#14. We have an agreement," she explained. "I watch nothing to do with a hobbit, Vulcan, or comic book hero, and in return, Dexter's not forced to sit through a foreign romance, a BBC production, or one my classic films.
Kristin Billerbeck
#15. WI played a young Helena Bonham Carter in a BBC film called 'A Dark Adapted Eye,' and I thought she was a completely spellbinding person. Totally unmoved by other people's expectations, fashions or opinions. She's probably the coolest English actress there is. Incredibly idiosyncratic.
Honeysuckle Weeks
#16. The first thing we did was to proclaim our Liverpoolness to the world, and say 'It's all right to come from Liverpool and talk like this'. Before, anybody from Liverpool who made it, like Ted Ray, Tommy Handley, Arthur Askey, had to lose their accent to get on the BBC.
John Lennon
#17. The story of Harold Fry and his unlikely pilgrimage began as an afternoon play for radio. For many years, I have been writing plays and adapting novels for 'Woman's Hour' and the 'Classic' series. So this was originally a three-hander play, broadcast one sunny afternoon on BBC Radio 4.
Rachel Joyce
#18. The BBC is the greatest broadcaster in the world. It's the standard that everyone measures themselves against. If we lose the BBC, it won't be quite as bad as losing the royal family, but an integral part of this country will have gone. But then, I'm an old guy.
Terry Wogan
#19. That's the first time I've seen sex between two men on the BBC.
Eamon Dunphy
#20. As soon as I got my proper first job, I never did acting again. I think the last thing I did was a Mike Figures film, and then I got a series with the BBC. I'm glad of the experience, because I think it's very, very good to understand what actors go through.
Justin Chadwick
#21. The BBC is another part of the destruction of Great Britain.
Norman Tebbit
#22. Prof Stephen Hawking, one of Britain's pre-eminent scientists, has said that efforts to create thinking machines pose a threat to our very existence. He told the BBC:The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.
Stephen Hawking
#23. I started writing sketches with Dennis Kelly, who I ended up writing 'Pulling' with. We entered a BBC competition and did quite well, then started writing bits for other people's shows. You wheedle your way in, write pilots and eventually you end up writing a sitcom.
Sharon Horgan
#24. I wanted to say, "I'm the Doctor and this is my companion," but I doubted Sophie was a fan of the long-running BBC series. Forget the TARDIS and the sonic screwdriver, the Doctor's best gadget was the psychic paper. I can't tell you how many times I wished I had some.
Kevin Hearne
#25. We took up the offer with the BBC, and that was Monty Python's Flying Circus. I didn't have to submit my ideas to the group. I used to turn up on the days we recorded with a can of film under my arm, and in it went.
Terry Gilliam
#26. Because of England's lack of social mobility, unless they make truly heroic efforts, writers who are privately educated and then go on to Oxbridge or an institution like the BBC will generally embarrass themselves when they attempt to have a go at working- or lower middle-class characters.
Adrian McKinty
#27. There are traditionalists, and there are people in the middle, which is where I am. I still get my newspaper delivered. I love the ritual of it. But I also jump into the cab when I leave home and I look at some BBC on my iPad.
Glenda Bailey
#28. I'd like to thank the BBC for allowing me to work here. And I'd like to thank the wife and kids for making it necessary.
Les Dawson
#29. When I joined Granada - which, you don't want to start crying about these things, but Granada was a very, very hot place to be, it was my good fortune to be there at that time - the BBC was firmly asleep.
Michael Apted
#30. All I can do is advocate changes at the BBC while respecting editorial independence upon which the success of the BBC rests. I can't do anything that requires the BBC to pay certain people certain amounts.
Jeremy Hunt
#31. Oh yes, it's definitely been jumped on, that egg.
Tony McCabe
#32. Apparently, presenters of BBC shows are supposed to be impartial. I'm not entirely clear what that means. It is sensible that people presenting programmes shouldn't secretly be in the pay of McDonald's, Ukip or the Pipe Smoker of the Year organisation.
David Mitchell
#33. It's an absolute disgrace that there isn't a books programme on the BBC.
Mariella Frostrup
#34. I was shooting a mini-series for Sundance/BBC, called 'Top of the Lake,' that was shot by Jane Campion, who's a beautiful native New Zealander and famous film director. The role I was playing was very intense, and they shaved half my hair off. So, I looked like this post-apocalyptic character.
Jay Ryan
#35. I've always had a social awareness. My favorite channel on TV is BBC News 24. For a while, I had to have it on repeat in my house. I've always been interested in what's going on in the world.
Douglas Booth
#36. I come out of TV. I come out of live television, BBC drama: that's where I started first as a designer, then a director. Then I went independent TV, then television advertising.
Ridley Scott
#37. If someone says, 'No, no, no, the earth is round!', they think this person is an extremist. That's what it's like for someone with my right-of-centre views working inside the BBC.
Jeff Randall
#38. It's tough and it should be tough - it should never be easy to be given millions of pounds to make a drama. The coalition government is doing terrible things to the BBC, but drama will survive even if we end up putting on a play in a backroom of a pub.
Russell T. Davies
#39. I've been lucky to have made a number of travel programmes with the BBC, the object being to see places off the beaten track. As a result, I've often had a guide who's been able to show me things that you wouldn't see with a tour group.
Michael Palin
#40. Before 'American Idol' and all this stuff, I was obsessed with music charts, and I used to go online to find out what was popular in other countries. I'd log on to the BBC website, and that's how I found out about artists like Natasha Bedingfield, Daniel Bedingfield and Take That.
David Archuleta
#41. There are no shepherds in Shepherd's Bush. I've been there. It's just houses and stores and roads and the BBC. That's all." pointed out Richard, flatly.
"There are shepherds," said Hunter, from the darkness just next to Richard's ear. "Pray you never meet them.
Neil Gaiman
#42. You go in and meet the head of BBC One and get an assurance about not dumbing down. And then, of course a few months later, he's been replaced by someone you haven't met.
John Cleese
#43. At the BBC we've had plenty of women in good management jobs. It comes and goes but there's been plenty. On air, I think there's quite a bit more we can do.
Evan Davis
#44. For better or worse, MTV sort of bridges the whole country together almost like the BBC does in England. It's opened up everything so wide that it's possible for everyone to have different ideas.
Joey Ramone
#45. So now it's space and time," he said. "You ever watch Doctor Who on PBS?"
"All the time," she said dryly, "on the BBC. And don't think I wouldn't sell my soul for a TARDIS.
Diana Gabaldon
#46. Yesterday people were going past my window in t shirts and dresses. But that's the men at the BBC for you.
Eddie Mair
#47. I've been told by the BBC that if I make one more offensive remark, anywhere, at any time, I will be sacked. And even the angel Gabriel would struggle to survive with that hanging over his head. It's inevitable that one day, someone, somewhere will say that I've offended them, and that will be that.
Jeremy Clarkson
#48. An adaptation I was working on of Trollope's 'The Pallisers' has been axed by the BBC ... I was also going to do Dickens' 'Dombey and Son' but they've asked me to do 'David Copperfield' instead.
Andrew Davies
#49. I once worked with Emma Thompson's mother, Phyllida Law. I worked with her on a BBC drama, and she was hilarious. I loved her so much, and she was great to work with.
Thomas Sangster
#50. A lot of the music is the kind of thing I grew up with, listening to it with my parents. So there was a band in London called the BBC Big Band, and I sang with them. And I had never done a big band before, and it was just so fantastic and I had such a good time ... so that's how it all came about
Frances Ruffelle
#51. When the news is good, the BBC view is: 'Get the government out of the picture quickly, don't allow them to say anything about it.' When the news is bad: 'Let's all dump on the government.'
Iain Duncan Smith
#52. The BBC, during its 24 hours on the air, plays a very wide range of stuff. And it's not commercial.
Robin Trower
#53. The trouble with climate change is it's an extraordinarily diverse and complex issue, but for example if the BBC would let me make some of the programmes I'd like to make on climate change, I bet you there would be a change of emphasis.
Robert Winston
#54. Edward Smith: What do you think is the characteristic of a really nice person? Some people you obviously do like more than others.
Andy Warhol: Ummm, well, if they talk a lot.
ES: What, and don't make you talk?
AW: Yeah, yes, that's a really nice person.
Andy Warhol
#55. When I was a kid, I wrote to the BBC, and the producers sent me a huge package through the post with 'Doctor Who' scripts. I'd never even seen a script and couldn't believe that they actually wrote this stuff down. It sort of opened a door.
Peter Capaldi
#59. Seriousness is no more a guarantee of truth, insight, authenticity or probity, than humour is a guarantee of superficiality and stupidity.
Stephen Fry
#60. We're big fans of the show on BBC, and some of the greatest actors in film and television have done this character, from Basil Rathbone to Nicol Williamson to Michael Caine. (Executive producer) Rob Doherty came in with the pitch last season, it was immediately a show that we gravitated towards.
Nina Tassler
#61. The BBC did a survey of the top 50 things to do before we die. Not while we're still alive, before we die.
Bill Bailey
#62. I refuse to have a life partner who spends his days pretending to be on a BBC show.
Lisa Lutz
#63. My YouTube videos have literally millions of views ... Yet I'm still airbrushed out of the BBC Stalinist revision of history; the chart shows have been instructed not to play my music!
Jonathan King
#64. I've played the leads in two British TV series. I've done a bunch of mini-series. Everybody in Australia is a bit in awe of BBC. I've worked for there, and that was a great experience.
Robert Taylor
#65. The prospect of the UK without a BBC funded by the licence fee is anywhere between improbable and impossible.
Tessa Jowell
#66. My first paid role was my first job out of drama school, which was 'Just William.' It was a BBC TV show. I played Ethel.
Lily James
#67. My fantasy is, if I wasn't on 'Dexter,' I would move my family to London and work for the BBC on 'Doctor Who.'
Manny Coto
#68. I have been to Buckingham Palace and 10 Downing Street but cannot get on the BBC. I am very disappointed because it boils down to snobbery.
Phil Taylor
#69. Getting to do what I think was my fifth BBC drama with Nikki Amuka-Bird - we've done 'Shoot The Messenger,' 'Five Days,' 'The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency,' 'Born Equal' and now 'Small Island' - was another highlight for me. And filming in Jamaica was great, too.
David Oyelowo
#70. Colin Morgan gives a stunning performance in Parked; he plays Merlin in the BBC TV show and he says the two characters are like night and day. Watch him. He's got everything it takes to be top notch.
Colm Meaney
#71. Shakespeare, adrenal glands, professional bowling, and the bizarre reproductive patterns of wasps (along with teams of BBC cameraman to document them(
N.D. Wilson
#72. She had been dumped a couple of years before by a sort of male equivalent to Charlie, a guy called Michael who wanted to be something at the BBC. (He never made it, the wanker, and each day we never saw him on TV or heard him on the radio, something inside us rejoiced.)
Nick Hornby
#73. Your brother needs to stop watching the BBC network." Logan shouted from inside, "I heard that, and never, woman. BBC holds my heart like no vixen ever shall.
Tijan
#74. I sat on the floor and watched TV
Thanking Christ for the BBC
A stupid fucking place to be
Down Rain Street
Shane MacGowan
#75. I don't think the BBC supporting digital switchover is top slicing. Top slicing is putting the license fee up for grabs for other broadcasters to bid for.
Jeremy Hunt
#76. I was a terrible painter - my portraits looked like the evil chimera love-children of Picasso's demoiselles and the BBC test card clown.
Sarah Hall
#77. Before I joined the BBC I was, like most of the intelligentsia, prejudiced not only against that institution but against broadcasting in general.
Louis MacNeice
#78. I honestly don't think you're taken seriously until you're 30. Any ideas I've ever taken to the BBC, they've told me I wasn't ready for it.
Rhys Thomas
#79. The BBC is very good at period drama - world-famous for getting the details right.
Lynne Reid Banks
#80. That's what I think is smart about 'Durham County.' It's not derivative of anything American. It's more in the vein of the BBC miniseries I grew up with.
Michelle Forbes
#81. I'm working harder now than ever before. I couldn't turn down the BBC job because I've never been offered the opportunity of killing three or four people on screen before!
Adam Faith
#82. When I was a young kid, the best stuff on television was always the BBC period dramas - it was what we sat down as a family to watch and what people talked about and looked forward to.
Neil Jackson
#83. [The] BBC was known as Auntie suggesting someone prudish and Victorian and that she still is on some days. On others she's a champagne-soaked floozie, her skirts in disarray, her mind in the gutter, and the mixture can be quite wonderful.
Morley Safer
#84. I wish I hadn't lost it, and for the rest of my life I can never again lose my temper on TV. The BBC could have sacked me and that would have been the end of my career on TV.
John Sweeney
#85. It's only because you can now watch cheerfully biased Fox News that you begin to realize how cheerlessly biased CNN really is - and always was. Or CBS. Or ABC. Or the BBC.
Andrew Sullivan
#86. The BBC can be infuriating at times but I love it with a passion.
John Sweeney
#87. What comes with a job as a staff member of the BBC is a certain self-censoring that you get utterly used to. You don't say everything you think. You hold back on some things.
Evan Davis
#88. I do have a regard for the musicality of language that came from BBC sitcoms like 'Fawlty Towers.'
Russell Brand
#89. We are rather in the position that used to exist at the BBC, where you feel that you can pick up the phone to people who are experts in their field and they will be very favourably disposed to you and share their knowledge.
Rory Bremner
#90. He is more rooted to the idea of home. He created this home...and established routines like watching the BBC and cooking barbecues for friends. It's much harder to dismantle that world and to rebuild it somewhere else.
Azar Nafisi
#91. The BBC knew I was successful from early on, but they weren't sure why, and they still aren't sure. What I do has been unconventional from the beginning, so they've never been sure. It just works. It just does.
Terry Wogan
#92. I did six series for the BBC and that was enough. I've been writing for ten years, which is more challenging artistically.
Alexei Sayle
#93. People in the BBC are always dying to get out of their open-plan offices.
Andrew Davies
#94. The sun doesn't live in England; it comes here on holiday when we're all at work.
Benny Bellamacina
#95. I've gotten more flack from the remake nature of our 'Being Human' from American audiences than I have from British fans. Every fan of the BBC original that I've bumped into seemed very excited and interested in seeing what we did with it - at least to my face!
Samuel Witwer
#96. When you're a kid, they tell you it's all ... grow up. Get a job. Get married. Get a house. Have a kid, and that's it. But the truth is, the world is so much stranger than that. It's so much darker. And so much madder. And so much better.
Elton Pope
#97. My first job was a film called 'Storm Damage' for the BBC. I was 16 and working with really respected British actors. I didn't have an agent at the time, and it kind of threw me into real acting.
Ashley Madekwe
#98. The BBC said I could stay on air until I was named. Well, I was named within the week. So I made no broadcasts after I'd been arrested, and the BBC stopped paying me at precisely the time when I needed the money most.
Paul Gambaccini
#99. It's sad that the BBC is toning down Dennis the Menace for a cartoon series. He is losing his weapons, catapult and peashooter, will no longer pick on Walter the Softy, and his ferocious grimace is to be replaced by a charming, boyish smile.
Simon Hoggart
#100. I used to do all my programming on a BBC computer. It was limited to 16 tracks, and you used the keyboard, not a mouse, to input, but I was using it so long, I got quite fast at it.
Vince Clarke
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